New Super Mario Odyssey Footage Shows A Maddening Minigame

Nintendo has really taken its time in doing something fresh and new with the Super Mario franchise. While some people have complained that Nintendo regularly goes back to the same well for various games, what's being done with Super Mario Odyssey is truly standout, even when it includes a maddening mini-game.

The video was posted up over on the Nintendo World Report YouTube channel, featuring just about two minutes worth of gameplay taken from a direct feed that was being showcased during this past year's E3 event in Los Angeles, California.

The footage for Super Mario Odyssey starts with Mario in a desert, and he rolls through the environment until he gets to Koopa Troopa out in the middle of nowhere with some blue arrows encircling him. Mario talks to the Koopa and there's a mini-game he can play that involves the serious business of walking. No really.

The Koopa has a task for Mario to walk along the blue lines surrounding him and if Mario can get over 80 points he will receive a green moon. Sounds easy, right? Well, the mini-game starts easy enough; you simply have to walk along the blue lines in a complete circle and score 80 points. The trick, however, is that the blue arrows begin to disappear as you start walking around the Koopa Troopa.

It may not sound like much, but the Super Mario Odyssey mini-game can easily get frustrating due to the fact that you have to rely on your memory of where the blue arrows were on the ground in order to complete the challenge means that stepping too far out of line will end the mini-game and you won't have enough points to complete it.

In the video above Nintendo World Report were able to do it in one try, but it definitely makes you wonder exactly how many times the mini-game was tried before it was completed correctly?

A lot of people also noticed that the music isn't always playing like it does in most other Super Mario games. In every past Super Mario title, including the planet-hopping games like Super Mario Galaxy and the mobile Super Mario Run, there was always music playing in the stages... but not this time around. There's more ambiance as Mario wanders through the levels and completes tasks. Some of the viewers compared it to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, which also only plays music in certain areas.

This is just one of the many aspects of Super Mario Odyssey, which have been slowly unveiled leading up to the game's release this holiday season. We also learned at E3 that Mario can "capture" just about any object within the game world and that you can scale to the very top of the city or ride the cars around New Donk City.

A lot of people are definitely looking forward to Super Mario Odyssey for the Nintendo Switch when it launches this fall, and the walking mini-game will just be one of the many new features to explore within the game.